Tag: Snake River

Eastern Washington & Oregon – May 2022 – Walla Walla to the Snake River Canyon

Nature, Transportation, Water Features

Our cold, rainy Memorial Day weekend continued with a visit to one of the best named towns in the country, Walla Walla Washington.

The area around Walla Walla has always been farmed, only in the last few decades it has become known for it’s vineyards.

Further east, at the Idaho/Washington border lie the twin towns of Clarkston, Washington and Lewiston, Idaho. The Snake River south of the towns has an impressive canyon.

Washington Highway 129 leaves Clarkston south towards the Oregon border, which when reached turns into Oregon Highway 3. It is a very cool drive!

Palouse Hills, Washington – May 2022 – Impressive Waterfalls

Nature, Transportation, Water Features

The Palouse Hills area of eastern Washington is unique in that they were created over tens of thousands of years from wind blown dust called loess. This land turned out to be very fertile for the growing of wheat and barley, and the hills are covered with these fields.

Near the crossroads town of Washtucna is an old bus that, much like Cadillac Ranch, people come along and paint it, over and over again.

Palouse Falls is a 200′ high waterfalls situated in a 377′ deep canyon, shaped like a huge bowl. It is very impressive.

The overlook has a large number of marmot’s.

Birds seemed to like to ride the updrafts from the falls.

Just down the road (and river) is the confluence of the Snake and Palouse rivers at Lyons Ferry. There is an impressive road bridge crossing the Snake.

Just down river is the more impressive rail bridge, which we had the good fortunate of catching a long freight train crossing.

The Palouse Hills is a very scenic area far from any large cities.